


R&D: The Strange Case of One Lalonde-Strider

by calumTraveler



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Freaking Furthest Ring, How does it work?, I Don't Even Know, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Split Personalites, Uncomfortable situation, What Was I Thinking?, i guess?, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:10:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calumTraveler/pseuds/calumTraveler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Dave Lalonde-Strider, and you awaken with the feeling that today is going to be a bad day.</p><p>Well, you suppose that would be a lie. It's already a bad day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	R&D: The Strange Case of One Lalonde-Strider

**00\. The Incident.**

Your name is Dave Lalonde-Strider, and you awaken with the feeling that today is going to be a bad day.

Well, you suppose that would be a lie. It's already a bad day.

Your room is tilted sideways, and you hear the sound of sloshing water.

Everything feels off, and for starters, you're not even in bed.

You're at your computer, which is currently displaying some webpage with the clock in the corner reading 4:13 P.M. on April the 14th, the day after your best friends, John and Jade's, shared birthday.

With a slouching start, you make your way to the door, and step outside into the hallway of your family's New York mansion.

Everything is falling sideways...just not in the same sideways.

Crap.

You dizzily make your way downstairs as a loud ringing starts to fill your ears. Something is not right, not right at all.

"Rose?" Your voice cracks in your throat as you call out for your sister, and PLEASE LET THIS BE A NIGHTMARE.

Your feet step into ankle-deep water not three-fourths of the way down the stairs, and you feel a frog in your throat.

The River beneath your house was now inside the house.

Craaap.

"Rose!?" You call out again for your sister, but no response comes to you.

You begin sloshing your way through the main living room, when you hear giggling.

Feminine giggling that sounded warped through some kind of filter.

You turn your attention to the kitchen where you see what looks to be a tornado made out of water, with your sister floating inside meddling with dark majiyks that she couldn't possibly understand or control.

"ROSE!"

And then her pale, white eyes, normally violet, turn towards you, and a shark-toothed grin breaks out in your direction...!

* * *

Your name is Dave Lalonde-Strider, and you awaken with the feeling that today is going to be a bad day.

Well, you suppose that would be a lie. It's already a bad day.

You're lying on the yard outside your house, looking in at it as it's entire first floor sinks into the normally-blue river that is somehow ten times bigger than usual and now colored pitch black.

Rose is nowhere in sight.

You run for a window- a door- anything that will let you back inside the rapidly sinking house.

You have to find her- have to rescue Rose.

You're so focused on trying to get to her that it takes a few moments to catch on that your body is already soaking wet, and your clothes are weighing you down from water that they logged during your escape from the house.

And so, you stumble backwards, to a safe distance, and fall to your knees as you cry as you remember.

Your sister is dead, died in your arms and dissolved away into a black ooze that you realize you're actually covered in, and is what is now dying the river black.

Your parents find you staring at the house when they return home from work. They ask you what happened, and you honestly have no real answer.

* * *

 

**RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT:**   
**The Strange case of One Lalonde-Strider.**

* * *

 

**01\. Denial.**

One week later, Your name is still Dave Lalonde-Strider, and you awaken in a hotel room.

Your mother, Roxy Lalonde, has spend the last week fishing out whatever surviving personal belongings that survived the disaster, including your's and Rose's laptops. The Desktops suffered water damage, but as you both used cloud services to back up your files across all devices, it's not much of a loss.

You don't know how to break it to John and Jade that Rose is dead. It's simply impossible for you to really figure out how to explain that she died messing with necromantic principles and daedric tomes of magic...

So you lie.

You tell them that she's been banned from her computer for the time being as punishment for causing the accident that 'flooded' your house.

They accept that, but they still want you to pass messages along to her.

You say the expected things in return, things like "rose says shes really sorry for doing all this shit," and "she says thanks for the concern."

You don't tell your parents that you're pretending your sister is still alive. It's your own little, private, coping mechanism.

You still can't believe it. Every time you look in the bathroom mirror you see her, just for a moment. Her eyes, her hair, her face, her body posture- all of it inplace of your own for but a single second before you remember that she's dead.

Soon enough, your father, Dirk Strider, decides that you're all moving to Texas. Keeping the accident under wraps is the key priority for a family of your standing.

Nobody mentions Rose, not even in the news.

They're pretending she doesn't exist, and you suppose that's their own way of coping. All the better for your ruse with John and Jade to work.

At the airport, you try to hack Rose's password on her laptop. No real reason other than a lack of things to do, and maybe trying to figure out why she did what she did.

Somehow, you guess Rose's password on the first try.

And you really wish you hadn't.

The desktop background is of some strange necromantic glyph sequence, and the folders that neatly obscure mind-scarring pieces of it seem to contain research on how to contact the Furthest Ring, and the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors.

Of course, you forgot to turn off Rose's internet connection, so Pesterchum tried to connect automatically.

It failed, naturally, due to not knowing the Airport's WiFi password, so you closed it down...

But not before noticing a strange blank space on the chum roll.

You dig into Rose's pesterlogs, and find that she's been chatting with some creep who writes in white text. You highlight a random line and immedaitely regret it.

"As for summoning the water-spout, that part will require an active body of water."

Whoever this creep was, he provoked Rose into doing what she did, or at least told her how to do it.

You get a churning sensation in your stomach, and you feel sick.

* * *

**02\. Bargaining.**

You try to pass it off to your parents as simple pre-flight jitters, and to a degree, it is.

You hear a voice, whispering in the back of your head. Ominous rumblings about how the Horrorterrors want their pound of flesh and will bring the plane down.

How you'll die mid-flight with no explanation.

You try to push it away; you plead with the voice, ever so familiar yet just out of reach, to leave you alone.

When you get on the flight, you request sleeping pills from a waitress, along with a glass of water.

The voice grins, and you don't know how you know but you know that it's grinning, saying, "You're going to overdose and never wake up!"

You ignore it and take only the recommended dosage.

* * *

Your name is Dave Lalonde-Strider, and you awaken with the feeling that today is going to be a bad day.

Well, you suppose that would be a lie. It's already been a bad day for about the last month now.

The new apartment in Texas is...different, to say the least.

Two bedrooms- your parents and yours, one bathroom, one tiny kitchen, a modest living room already filled up with your Dad's salvaged equipment.

And to top it all off? You're on the Tenth of Ten Floors.

The voice continually torments you- whispering thoughts of throwing yourself off the roof.

You hate it, and you hate how when it's not trying to get you to kill yourself that it tries to make you think you've caught this cold or that disease...

You never had these problems before, and you hate how one simple accident can make you over-react to everything.

You push it all out of your head, pleading, bargaining, wishing that the voice would just get the hint and leave.

* * *

 

**03\. Illusion.**

You play the roll of "Reluctant Messenger" between John and Jade, and Rose. You use your access to Rose's older logs to refine your impersonation of her, and soon enough "Rose" is unbanned, and allowed access to her laptop again.

You play both rolls, switching seamlessly between computers by typing with one hand each. You set up a macro on Rose's computer to automatically apply the right punctuation so neither John or Jade suspect a thing.

It's another month later when you begin seeing Rose outside of the mirrors.

It's her, and yet not her.

You don't recall Rose ever owning a purple, black, and gold dress, but that's what you see her in, if she's wearing anything at all that isn't made up of black, slimy, oil-like energy that forms flames and tendrils and makes her skin look gray.

When you play your double-typing, you hear Rose's voice as you write her lines, and sometimes, instead, you see her writing on her computer while you write on yours solo.

And then you place the whispers that have tormented you.

It's Rose's voice.

Soon, you begin to feel like you're losing your mind.

You find yourself arguing with her like you would when she was alive.

The smirks, the casual flirtatious tone to her words, the way she moves her hair over her ear- every visual and audible cue you can rememner, you see infront of you.

You know its all in your head. You keep it contained there when your parents are at home, or when you're at school, or at the mall...

But when you're all alone, you aren't quite so sure.

You fall into a familiar pattern and it scares you because you _know_ she's dead, but you just can't stop indulging yourself just a little bit more.

You try to ignore the fact that her voice is the one that's tormenting you with "self-destructive thoughts", as Rose herself put it in one of your illusionary discussions, but soon, you start to get fed up with the fact that you're seeing her more and more as that monster clothed in evil, and not the sister you'd grown up with for years and years.

You know you're teetering on the edge of sanity when your eyes start changing colors, and you have to wear your shades inside so your parents don't see- just incase it's real and your eyes are really turning from red to violet and it's NOT all inside your head.

* * *

 

**04\. Collapse.**

John and Jade invite you to their house in Washington, or was it Oregon? ("Hellmurder Island, more like," Rose taunts.)

And it's Only You that they invite.

You're beginning to suspect that they've seen through the ruse.

And you might be sort of okay with that.

You take the offer up, and your Mom drives you out there as she has a business meeting in the same town...

"You Know they know."

You hear Rose's voice so often now that not even your headphones can drown her out.

Your hallucinations have even begun singing and dancing along.

Your name is Dave Lalonde-Strider, and you are so very tired.

You arrive at John and Jade's door, and they greet you with hugs and smiles and you greet them with your usual care-free attitude...

Your Mom smiles wryly at their dad, and it seems that HE is her Business meeting.

Damn it, you should've seen this coming.

And so, John and Jade take you up to John's room, and...

You let the dam break, and you spill.

You finally admit to them how you've been lying, in a sense. You tell them that you're seeing Rose and then you tell them that you question your own sanity by taking off your shades and asking them what color your eyes are.

You expect "red," you expect them to agree that it's all in your head and that you're imagining it all and GOD that would be such a relief it it was all in your head.

They say "Violet" instead, and you start to freak out just a little.

Jade catches on that you're hyperventilating, and she offers that you take a bath to soak and relax and maybe that's all you need is a good rest? "When was the last time you took a bath, HM?" and she tries to play it off like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Feeling bad? Take a bath!

You soak in the tub and your mind wanders on its own for once, no Rose in sight or sound.

What if YOU are actually Rose and this entire time it's Dave who's been dead? What...What if Dave Lalonde-Strider NEVER existed? What if you were Rose Lalonde-Strider the entire time? What if you'd made up Dave? What if you've been suffering from a split personality the entire time?

Was any of this real? Had the entire time from the accident just been a nightmare? Were you going to wake up as someone who wasn't even Dave or Rose? Were John and Jade even real?

And then the demonic Rose returns, giggling, pressing her slimy body against yours (She'sNotRealShe'sNotRealSHEISNOTREALSTRIDERGETAGRIP) as she whispers a confirmation to every damn questioning thought that runs through your head even though none of it makes sense and "It doesn't have to make sense when you're going bat-shit insane."

"Go Away!" You repeat, "Get out of my head!" as a mantra.

"You silly thing, How can I leave when I've been a piece of you the entire time?"

And then the water in the tub turns black and then with a wave of an arm it explodes outwards, and you've hit your head on the counter top and now Rose is hovering in front of you, holding the toilet and bathtub in some kind of mystical aura and You SCREAM.

* * *

 

**05\. Shatter point.**

Your name is Jade Harley, and you've just found your best friend suffering a mental breakdown in your bathroom, bleeding over the floor from a knock to the head from the counter.  
  
You don't know what to do- Dave's lying there, arms thrashing about and you can't get close to him at all and then suddenly his red eyes are putting out that freaky violet aura again and you call for John and your dad and Dave's mom and none of them have any idea what's going on either.  
  
He just keeps screaming about Rose attacking him with dark energies and trying to squash him with the bath tub and....!  
  
And then Dave collapses unconscious and you've got to get him to the hospital before he bleeds out and nobody knows what to do....!  
  
Getting him to the hospital is the easy part but the waiting is the hard part. John's hugging you to try to keep you from freaking out even though he's freaking out a lot too. Dave's mom has called his dad, still in Texas, and he's on his way via plane now...  
  
And Dad... You've got no clue what he's thinking at all.  
  
Then the doctors say they're keeping him over night because he's lost a lot of blood and you nearly faint because you've got no idea if Dave is going to survive or not and even if he does if he'll be alright.  
  
You just hope that he'll be alright...

* * *

Your name is Jade English, and you've just found your best friend suffering a mental breakdown in your bathroom, bleeding over the floor from a knock to the head from the counter.

...And the toilet and Bathtub are lying on the ground in pieces in the laundry room just below the bathroom.

What. The. Hell?

You yell for your brother, you yell for your dad, and Mrs. Lalonde, and together you get your friend dried off, dressed, and rushed to the hospital to take care of the head wound they'd just suffered.

Your brother is a wreck, pacing the floor of the waiting room, and your dad gives Mrs. Lalonde the kind of hug you end up giving John to keep him from running into the emergency room and causing trouble.

Nobody knows for sure what's going on now, except for maybe you.

You made sure to get Dave out of the bathroom before anyone else saw the damage done in there. Had you imagined it? No. That was definitely real.

A Giant gaping hole in the floor is not something you can just imagine.

Rose had definitely been dealing with dark majiyks, according to her laptop. The problem now seemed to be what was really going on here.

Dave or Rose? Who was really under the care of the doctors in the operating room at this precise moment? Dave for sure had red eyes, but that body she'd dragged out had the other twin's violet orbs.

The problem was that whatever the problem really was, it was terrifyingly real.

And it scares you.

They return Dave to your custody that night, though he's unconscious, saying it wasn't a serious wound and should heal up just fine.

You haven't told anyone how Dave hit his head, or what was going on, but you end up carrying them on your back to the car in lieu of anyone else, and when you get home, you take them up to your room.

Not too soon after that, you hear John yelling in surprise upon discovering the state of the bathroom.

Mrs. Lalonde just hits the liquor Cabinet in your dad's office.

And...Your dad is not amused about either development.

Mr. Lalonde is called, and he says that he's on his way from Texas to join you all.

You just focus on keeping your friend's head from sticking to the pillow and tearing the bandages loose as he sleeps uneasily.

* * *

Your name is Jade Egbert, and you've just found your best friend suffering a mental breakdown in your bathroom, bleeding over the floor from a knock to the head from the counter.

There's water everywhere, as the toilet has somehow exploded into fragments. You call for your brother, then your father and Mrs. Lalonde, and together you take Rose Lalonde to the hospital.

Her violet eyes dart wildly, red stained with blood-shot vessels, as she tries to process things you can't possibly understand.

Getting her into one of your night shirts was the easy part, getting her into the car...not so much.

"The sky! It's pink! No!"

The blow to the head obviously hadn't helped out with Rose's mental state, and up until now, she had thought herself "Dave," a brother she'd never had.

The real Dave Strider out in Texas, however, was very concerned for their mutual friend, especially as they'd witnessed her slow slip from sanity over the last few months.

Things were going to get rather strange from here on out.

Rose struggles against everything and even the sedatives the doctors give her aren't doing much of anything.  
  
All the while, you think back to the laptop that Rose had shown you, full of demonic things used for some kind of summoning ritual and....   
  
You just don't know what to believe anymore.

* * *

 

Your name is Jade Crocker, and you've just found your best friend suffering a mental breakdown in your bathroom, splashing around wildly in the bathtub, throwing her arms about wildly, and having bashed her head against part of the tub slightly.

You aren't sure what to make of this scenario, and you stand there staring for a few moments as you process that the boy you thought was Dave Lalonde-Strider is actually a girl- probably the "Rose" he'd claimed to have as a sister.

You get a strange sense of De ja vu as you finally get a hold of yourself and rush to the bathtub to help pull your friend out of the water.

You don't understand what's going on, and you don't think you ever will.

You hug your friend tightly, holding her close as you whisper, "it'll be alright, calm down" in various forms to her.

Eventually, she calms down, even as John comes running into the room, and stares on in confusion.

"Bwuh?" rather nicely summed up the entire situation thus far.

You decide to look into things once Dave- Rose?- is safely in bed and asleep, and it's decided that the blood that had came from his-her?- head was just from a small scratch rather than anything serious.  
  
It takes no time at all to realize that there's a video file on "summoning" that "Mr. Vanilla Milkshake" had sent to the TentacleTherapist account, and that upon de-compiling it in a video editor, there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.  
  
Hypnotic suggestions and audio cues that are so well thoroughly mixed that you're going to have a really hard time figuring out how to counter it and fix your friend's mind, if it can be fixed at all...

* * *

All of these possibilities and more diverged out from a single moment.

All observed, all considered, all wondered.

And then you wake up.

* * *

**06\. Reconciliation.**

You are Rose Lalonde-Strider, and you are about to perform a magical spell that will fracture time and space, and allow you to commune with the Noble Horrorterrors of the Furthest Ring.

You strip down from your usual clothes, and put on a dress that you had special ordered for this occasion, gold, black, and violet.

You slip downstairs on bare feet, and prepare the circle in the kitchen.

With a tired smile, you chant the spell.

A hole opens in the floor, and water spills in from the river below, swirling up to you and forming into a cyclone of water around you- disolving away all of those pesky material bonds that make up matter and laws of physics.

Your dress converts into a slimy, oily substance, and you continue the enchantment even as your house begins to shake and sink into the ground from the power of the spell you've cast.

As you near the point of your body itself dissolving away into the black-goo of the Furthest Ring, your brother approaches, calling for you from upstairs.

Damn it. You forgot about him. You thought you were alone!

You can't stop the procedure now, your mind is in too many places at once and an animalistic nature is surfacing in place of coherent thought.

Your brother steps into view and you suddenly decide that you'd like to taste his soul.

You lose focus on the spell- and leap out of the cyclone.

Time shatters, and yet remains whole. You find yourself suddenly dissolving away into nothing- and your soul merging with his...

And then Space shatters- and fails to remain whole.

Your brother is thrown through the house, landing safely outside.

The being known as Rose-Lalonde Strider is no-more; a mere shadow of her former self.

There is chaos, and twisting madness as Dave's mind glimpses so many alternate realities at once. You try to keep him sane- that small piece of humanity left tries to protect her brother.

You make him go mad instead.

And then _**he**_ shatters along with time and space- and then you are in so many places at once.

In some, he is you, in others, he becomes. In yet more still you become him.

The Horrorterrors chide you for you childish mistake, and order you to fix it in order to be able to join their ranks as you once wished.

But the chaos you could research from your brother's new-found insanity?

You find that to be a much more worthwhile, and enjoyable development than joining their circle...

For now, at least.

**Author's Note:**

> What the hell did I just write.


End file.
